Post navigation

Emptying the White Knapsack

Posted on February 12, 2014

Jaime Grant, Ph.D.

“Students of color at colleges across the country have been organizing for years to foreground their experiences of racism – raising a broad range of issues from campus life, to curriculum, to hiring practices and faculty representation of people of color. At Kalamazoo College, a growing number of students of color are raising key questions about a college’s readiness for meaningful engagement with issues of racism, while students at the University of Michigan and the University of California Los Angeles are organizing against erasure in the wake of legal decisions against affirmative action.

“For many white students, this article is an eye-opener because of its analysis that white people benefit from racist structures and the racist distribution of power and resources in US society every day of our lives. Yet this article remains limited because it offers no direction for its readers after coming to this awareness.

From action research and radical scholarship, to engaged teaching and grassroots activism, to community and cultural organizing and revelatory art practice, Praxis Center makes visible the imperative social justice work being done today. Read more about K’s Praxis Center.